Family Honor

Chapter 2

Betty Patton was far too perfect. She annoyed me on sight in the same way Martha Stewart does. Her hair was too smooth. Her makeup was too subtle. Her legs were too shapely. Her pale yellow linen dress fit her much too well. She sat with one perfect leg crossed over the other in a low armchair in the study sipping coffee. The cup and saucer were bone-colored. There was a slim gold band around the rim of the cup. When Brock introduced us, she smiled without rising and offered her hand gracefully. Her handshake was firm but feminine. She said she was pleased to meet me. She called me Ms. Randall. I don’t know how she did it, but any neutral observer would have known at once that Betty was the employer, and I was the employee.

“You’ve been shooting,” Betty said.

“Yes.”

“Can she shoot, Brock?”

“Well, sort of,” Brock said.

“Did you ask Brock to shoot, Ms. Randall?”

“No,” I said. “I didn’t.”

“Oh, well, you’ve disappointed him badly then. That was the real point of the exercise.”

I had nothing to say about that, and I said it. The decorative fire was still burning vigorously. A servant must have fed it while we were out. The air-conditioning was still fogging the glass in the French doors.

“I think Ms. Randall is who we need,” Brock said.

Betty smiled and sipped her coffee. She didn’t spill a drop on her dress. She wouldn’t.

“I rather expected you to think so,” Betty said when the elegant cup was perfectly centered back in the elegant saucer. “She’s quite pretty.”

“She has a good background,” Brock said. “She is straightforward. And I have the sense that she is discreet.”

Discreet about what?

“Do you think you can find our Millicent?” Betty said, leaning forward slightly as if to make her question more compelling. Like her husband, she seemed incapable of an unrehearsed gesture.

“Probably,” I said.

“Because?”

“Because I’m really quite good at this.”

Betty smiled interiorly.

“Odd profession for a woman,” she said.

“Everyone says that.”

“Really?”

I knew it would annoy her to be clumped in with everyone.

“Yes,” I said. “Usually they say it just as you did.”

“Are you married?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Ever been married?”

“Yes.”

“So you’re not a lesbian.”

“Having been married doesn’t prove it.”

“Well, are you?”

“I guess that’s not germane.”

Betty stared at me for a moment. A perfect little frown line appeared between her flawless eyebrows.

“That’s rather uppity, Miss Randall,” she said.

“Oh, I can be much more uppity than this, Mrs. Patton.”

She was motionless for a moment and then turned to her husband.

“I’m afraid she won’t do, Brock.”

“Oh for God’s sake, Betty. Maybe you could stop being a bitch for a minute.”

Again Betty was motionless. Then she put her cup and saucer on the coffee table, and rose effortlessly, the way a dancer might, and walked from the room without another word. I watched her husband watch her go. There was nothing in his look that told me what he felt about her. Maybe that was what he felt about her.

“Don’t mind Betty,” he said finally. “She can be difficult.”

“I would imagine,” I said.

He smiled. “She’d have preferred someone less attractive.”

“I’m trying,” I said.

He smiled widely. “And failing, may I say.”

I nodded. “Your daughter’s name is Millicent?”

“Yes — Millie.”

“When did she disappear?”

“She hasn’t disappeared,” Patton said. “She’s run off.”

“When did she run off?”

“Ah, today is Wednesday,” he leaned forward and looked at the calendar on his desk. “She went not this past Monday, but, ah, a week ago Monday.”

“Ten days?” I said.

“Yes. I know it seems long, but, well, we weren’t too worried at first.”

“She’s done this before,” I said.

“Well, in a sense, that is, she’s gone off to stay with a friend for a couple of days.”

“Without telling you.”

“You know how rebellious teenagers are,” he said.

“I’m not judging your daughter or you, Mr. Patton. I’m trying to find a place to start.”

“I have a picture,” he said.

He took a manila envelope out of his desk drawer, and handed it across to me. I took the picture out and looked at it. It was a good picture, not one of those bright-colored school photos in the cardboard folders that I used to bring home every year. It showed a pretty girl, perhaps fifteen, with straight blond hair and her mother’s even features. There was no sign of life in the picture. Her eyes were blank. She seemed to be wearing her face like a mask.

“Pretty, isn’t she,” he said.

“Yes. This a good likeness?”

“Of course, why do you ask?”

“Well, just that sometimes people look a little more, ah, relaxed in real life, than they do in studio photographs.”

“That’s a good likeness of Millie,” he said.

“May I keep this?”

“Of course.”

“You know what she was wearing when she left?”

“No, I’m sorry, she had so many clothes.”

“Take anything with her?”

He shook his head, with that false helplessness men like to adopt when talking about women.

“And have you any suggestion where I should start?”

“You might ask at the school?”

“Which is?”

“Pinkett School,” he said. “In Belmont. The headmistress is Pauline Plum.”

Pauline Plum. From Pinkett. How darling.